Factories employ a fraction of people they did before the 80s.
Depends on the industry. Automobiles? Yeah, that has been largely automated. Trailers? The most common trailer brands I can think of are still built manually.
CNC machines still need operators, and those operators are still doing manual labor. An entire factory only needs one guy on a computer to manage all the programing those CNC machines need. Everything else is about making sure the material is correctly positioned and the machine is working correctly.
Manufacturing isn’t nearly as automated as you might think. Not as many industries have adopted the rote programing robotic arms that you’re imagining from some Ford production line.
Plus factories and industrial are only a fraction of the manual labor world. Agriculture, construction, forestry, trades, all sorts manual labor jobs exist that have nothing to do with factories. And that’s not even counting other unskilled labor fields like the service industry.
To be fair, Ford builds them as work trucks. Like you said, the biggest thing you can buy without needing an upgraded license.
The triple cab, pickup style box, and lift kit are all aftermarket. Straight from Ford it’s at most a king cab with a frame rail back. Then you’re supposed to put on some kind of working back (toolbox, dump truck, lift arm). That’s the kind of thing you see in official marketing images.
I used to work for a company that built garbage compactor units and put them on the back of trucks like these. The main selling point was that you only need a regular license and you can fit into narrower spaces than a full size garbage truck.